Shades of Red
by The Late Mr. Valentine
Summary: What if there were other vampires in Ooo? And what if a small pocket of humans had survived the Mushroom War, living and breeding somewhere underground? How would the two groups interact?
1. Chapter 1

"They got… they got Marceline…" Vincent collapsed against one of the courtyard walls, his breathing ragged. With a shaking hand, he grabbed a jagged bit of wood sticking out of his chest and yanked it free, then dropped it onto the dead grass beside him. Blood still oozed down the side of his face from a gash running from his left eyebrow to his jaw, and his right sleeve as missing, ripped free from the partially burned cloth and wrapped around a wound on his bicep.

"And you just left her there?" Bryce appeared from behind another wall in the partially-destroyed courtyard, an accusatory glare aimed at Vincent. The others seemed divided between sympathy and equally venomous scowls.

"I couldn't… they'd removed her head before I could even get back to her. It was a whole mob of them..." Vincent looked up through bleary eyes, glaring right back at Bryce. "Didn't see you out there, ya wad."

"Too self-important to get his hands dirty." Coraline snarled, easing herself down beside Vincent and placing a hand on his shoulder.

Bryce mumbled something that Vincent didn't catch, his pale skin flushing ever so slightly. The latter's eyes narrowed slightly as he shrugged Coraline's hand off and struggled to pull himself up against the wall. "What did you just say?"

With nothing less than a sneer, the arrogant strategist repeated his mumbling, an insult directed at Marceline's heritage. Vincent was on him almost as soon as the words left his mouth, a blur of movement and a flash of silver-infused steel. Bryce hit the wall behind him hard, a poisonous blade pinning him to the stone bricks. Vincent's face was within inches of his, eyes almost closed and only black visible through the slits. "I'd say 'have some respect for the dead'…" The injured vampire hissed, tears, sweat and blood dripping down his chin onto Bryce's shirt. "But you'll soon be joining her."

The blade jerked up, and Vincent kept his eyes locked on Bryce's, even as a torrent of turpentine-like blood gushed out onto him. From within the inkwells in his eye sockets came a small pinprick of muddy crimson, growing ever so slightly as to gauge the fear in the tactician's eyes. "Marceline maynot have had much to be queen of, but that gives you absolutely no right to insult her. You're nothing more than a self-serving newborn who doesn't know who turned him or even when he was turned, and you've been nothing but a self-serving pain in the ass for everyone since the kingdoms banded together to attack us. You've kept us from communicating, fuck-all, from even knowing if there are any others left."

A hand touched his shoulder, and he yanked his blade free. Minutes dragged by as Vincent just stood there, body rigid, black blood snaking down the sword to his wrist, and Bryce sinking to the ground gasping. Finally, he turned to face the others, eyes unchanged and still a little wet with tears. The scowls had only darkened, and sympathy turned to fear. "Don't any of you forget who attacked first, or why we're all huddling here in what used to be to PB's courtyard." He dragged the flat of the silver-steel blade against the front of one leg, then the other side against the other, smearing blood across the already ratty, faded out jeans, finally sliding it into the worn leather sheath on his back.

No one said anything, and the injured vampire dipped his head slightly, sniffing and wiping his nose with the back of one hand. "Well, I guess I'll just go, then. Maybe they haven't burned her body yet."

Vincent somberly leapt over the ruined wall, stumbling and falling shortly after hitting the ground. His body wanted him to stay down, but that wasn't happening. Howling, he pushed himself up off his knees, letting out another howl as he got to his feet. His lips trembled, and his fists clenched and unclenched several times. Between sputtering sobs, he shrieked again, wordless and throat-rending. Another scream, and he sank back to his knees.

And so he stayed there, unsure of how much time had passed. Now quiet and as composed as he would be for the rest of the night, the vampire rose again, wondering if the others had been watching. Unless they just didn't care, he couldn't how imagine they hadn't, he hadn't made it very far. The wounded undead took a few uneven steps, shambling zombie-like towards a stretch of woods. A few leaves rustled as he broke into the treeline, but as far as anyone would have been concerned, it wasn't anything more than the wind.


	2. Chapter 2

_A slightly younger Vincent leans against a wall near a Marceline appearing close to the same age. He shifts nervously, one hand on the hilt of a sword at his hip, the other in the pocket of his jeans. Though clearly there for a purpose, he wears little armor- a single, leather shoulder pad on the left shoulder, a steel gauntlet on the right hand, steel digits clicking loudly against the hilt of the sword._

_The elder vampire glances over at his charge; she casts no reflection, and he looks back at the door, chiding himself for not thinking. The last thing he needed was to get distracted, anyways._

"_I see you lookin', hero!" Followed by an impish giggle._

_Vincent blushes, his normally snowy skin blazing crimson, and shifts again to his other foot, somewhat uncomfortable. "My apologies, Marceline. S'pose I'm still a little human." Cutting her a look from the corner of his eyes, he could see she was blushing too, violent red on blue. "Though I can see you're flattered. At any rate, I'm not here to hit on you, I'm here just... in case."_

Vincent watched the sun as it fell back behind some hills, the worn fingertips of a tarnished gauntlet rapping softly against the hilt of the newer, more deadly sword. Something between a scream and a wail escaped his throat, met by a not-too-distant chorus of wolves.

He knew, smartly, that the humans who had slain Marceline were nearby, and he also knew that they'd been up for days. Once darkness set in, he'd stand a decent chance of getting revenge.

The vampire sighed, slowly standing up and stretching. Wouldn't be too much longer now.


	3. Chapter 3

Vincent moved with a swiftness none of the humans could ever have prepared for. Two sentries were dispatched far too easily, the vampire's blade going snicker-snack and a pair of heads rolling off into the underbrush. Even before the corpses had hit the ground, his mouth was open in a wordless scream.

Before he'd rushed back into the woods, he'd wondered where this little pocket of humans had come from, and how they'd managed to rally support from most of Ooo towards exterminating his kind. It didn't make sense, to him, anyways. Humans, excluding Finn, had been thought dead for nearly a hundred years; the lone hero was an anomaly, to say the least.

It didn't really matter where they'd come from, how they'd been surviving all these years, or even that he was senselessly slaughtering them. He bore down on what he took for the main part of the ramshackle camp, a bright-burning fire, and leapt from the brush, colliding with what was probably once a knight. This knight, unfortunately, didn't seem to possess a helmet anymore, and in trying to wrest the vampire off him found his face pushed into the roaring flames. Vincent managed to clamber to his feet just in time to block a silver-tinged scimitar, still managing to press the knight's face into the burning tender with the heel of one boot. The vampire glared right into his opponent's eyes, searching for an explanation for Marceline's death.

None came. The only things in the man's heart was anger and fear. But Vincent was stronger, and both of them knew it. The man weakly forced him back, only to have Vincent lurch forward and grab the blade with his armored hand, an awful smile on his face. "Layered steel and leather... amazing what a couple decades can do for defense, isn't it?" With the horrible grimace still parting his lips, the vampire drove his own blade home, through the human's midsection and out his back. "If only we'd had this back when you were still the dominant species."

The corpse dropped like a sack of rocks, and the elder vampire found himself surrounded. At least the only human present in full armor had since stopped thrashing beneath his boot, presumably because most of his face had melted. Vincent chuckled nervously, lowering his blade. "Been a while since I seen such a gathering of real humans. Or been surrounded by such, either. Just like old times." He leered at them, turning in a circle to make sure they all saw his face. "So tell me boys, what rock've you been hiding under this millennium?"

The men -and a few women- remained stony-faced, glaring at the vampire with shadows dancing around them like cannibals before the hunt. Vincent's eyes narrowed, looking at the assortment of silver-tipped, coated, and blended weapons point at his person. His upper lip curled a little, exposing his fangs as he sneered at the humans. He could probably take all of them at once, but with the fire on one side and a ring of armed, probably trained, people around him, trying to engage the entire group would be tantamount to suicide. He sheathed his sword, hands raised in surrender.

In an instant, he was above them, though by no means safe, as a hail of arrows and throwing knives sailed past him. A silver-tipped -or was it _made_ of silver?- arrow made contact with his face, catching the left side of his mouth and burning a trail several inches towards his ear before zipping off past him. Pain shot through his entire head as he lurched back towards the trees, half-flying, half-falling. He crashed through the lower part of the canopy and hit the ground, left shoulder and neck impacting, before rolling a yard and a half into a hard stop by colliding with an ancient tree.

As he stood up, one hand supporting the rest of him against the tree and the other tracing what would mostly like form a scar on the side of his face, he jammed his eyes shut, trying to force the world to be still. Underbrush crunched as the band of warriors moved towards him. He half-opened his eyes, carefully stepping around the tree and flattening himself against it.

The vampire waited until the group had passed before doubling back, scurrying into their camp like the vermin they thought him to be. He crept along silently, investigating the ramshackle lean-to's and tent-like stretches of canvas. It became clear that he had a decision to make, made more difficult to decide by the pounding in his temples and adrenaline-fueled shakes. He stumbled back a ways, seeking shelter in the darkest of the impromptu buildings.

His stomach turned, an awful feeling considering his diet. Razing the village would mean killing a fair number of children. Burning it to the ground, burning the forest to the ground. Killing women. For close to two hundred years, he'd been fighting, pushing out as hard as he could through any means accessible, trying his damnedest to show humans and more recently non-humans that vampires weren't the monsters that humans had thought them since the Dark Ages.

His hands were still trembling as he cautiously slunk back to the fire, reaching in and snatching one of the roasting logs. With careful precision, he lobbed it into the corner of an open shack, waiting for the first signs of the flames catching. It didn't take long; in less than five minutes the fire had spread to the neighboring hovels, and the awful wailing of smoke-choking children filled the air. Soon, more shouting pierced the night, from the woods, were the warriors -soldiers- had been looking for Vincent. He floated back like a pox-bearing cloud, blending in with the blackness at the edges of the camp, watching. It didn't take long -humans move so quickly when their spawn are in danger- and the elder vampire quietly moved amongst them, staying hidden in the shadows, gauging their reactions.

The hopelessness, throwing acid in the face of their futile efforts to save their children, was tangible, able to be tasted, thicker than blood. Twice he saw fatigue-clothed men run screaming from burning buildings, the camouflage pattern of their clothes rapidly replaced by smoke and fire. As quickly as the flames were spreading and hope was fading, so was the vampire's indecisiveness, the hesitation to do things that he'd fought against for so long. It didn't matter now, there wasn't an audience left for his crusade, there were so few left to rally to his side, to draw arms against the enemy. He wasn't hiding now to avoid further conflict, no, he was starting to enjoy it.

Vincent waited until the inferno resembled the hellfires of the Fire Kingdom, maybe what the long dead theists -or maybe the humans still clung feebly to religion- thought of Hell. The humans had scattered, stretched thin across a camp much wider than Vincent had initially realized. He floated up above it, indifferent to being spotted, surveying the destruction.

He had finally become a monster. A thing that haunted the dreams of children, lurked in the dark places, made inhuman noises in the blackness of an old house. Screeching like a demon at home in the burning soon-to-be-wasteland, he swooped down and collided with a man in an extremely worn, patched general's uniform, complete with tassels and shiny pins. His armored hand clamped down on the man's throat, pinning his head to the ground, while his other hand reached back, pulling an ornate knife from one of his boots. The black metal -that stupid Chose Goose hadn't known what it was- was tarnished, but sharp enough to nick Vincent's pale skin as he brought it a bit too close on the way up. The man struggled beneath him, and the vampire loosened his grip, shifted so he wasn't pinning the warrior's arms, so the man could _try_ to remove his steel-covered digits.

A teeth-baring smile split his lips as he brought the knife down, slicing into the soldier's face, drawing blood. He didn't stop smiling as the screams erupted, nor did he stop carving, despite increased protest from his canvas. "What? **WHAT?!** I'm a monster, right?!" Up, down, spearing an eye, careful not to go too far back and risk breaking bone, puncturing the brain. Twist. Twist. "I'm a butcher, I kill kids! You're nothing but fucking cattle to me! **RIGHT?!**" He snarled, raking the blade across the man's face, a purely superficial cut, but serving to further disfigure the once handsome features.

Vincent leaned down, licking at the blood in mock sensuality. He could see people moving towards him and drove the blade into one side of the man's hand, rolling backwards onto his feet. It was pointless and flashy, dangerous, bringing the risk of a dislocated ankle or worse, but that was his intent, to show the humans exactly what they had sent hurtling headlong at them, a being with all the force of an atom bomb and twice the rage.

Three of them. A wicked wind whipped the vampire's hair forward, swinging the coattails of his suit-jacket -something else superfluous and serving only to intimidate the humans- forward. He leered at the two men and the woman, licking his red-stained lips. They stopped short, looking from him to the "masterpiece" the vampire had left on the face of their fallen comrade. By the time they looked back up, Vincent was nearly upon them, hand whipping forward into a solid right hook that slammed into the face of one of the men, creating an astonishingly loud crack that echoed throughout the camp. He followed with an uppercut from his uncovered hand, knuckles splitting on impact with the bottom of the man's jaw. Blood sloshed out of the man's mouth as he stumbled back, but the vampire wasn't done. Again the gauntlet lurched out, two fingers hooking under the fleshy underside of the man's jaw, pushing up, puncturing the skin and curling up out between his lips.

The black void of Vincent's eyes bored into those of his victims, as he gleefully pulled down, first snapping free the bottom jaw and then fully tearing free the lower half of the man's face. He casually discarded the half-face as one would a picked-over chicken bone, shaking a little of the blood from his glove, and just grinned at the other two humans, again licking his lips. Two red pupils surveyed them, barely the size of a housefly, floating in two inkwells. Weapons were drawn, a sword and a pair of dirks, but the two made no move on him. The vampire surmised they were too shocked by what he'd done to the others to challenge him. He retrieved a dirk of his own from the inside of his coat, casually inspecting it, taking his eyes off the humans.

The blade whizzed through the air, sliding between the woman's unarmored ribs. She fell back as Vincent threw himself at the last of the former trio, grabbing him by the collar and tearing into his throat. He drained him dry in a matter of seconds, not bothering to wipe the blood from his mouth. Tossing the corpse aside, he stalked through the camp dispatching the rest of the humans easily and without flair.

As he slowly drifted up into the night sky, away from the carnage, Vincent found himself lost in thought. There were more humans, this wasn't even the same group that had killed Marceline. There might be a lot more than he'd thought. He'd have to do something about that silver-burn soon, before it got infected or spread. His lack of a reflection would make it a trifling task.

Dark clouds overshadowed the moon as the vampire floated away, worn down from the past few weeks and the rapid deprecation of his moral code. He slowly made his way to Marceline's house, hoping all the while that it remained abandoned. Wearily, he opened the door, stopping to pet Schwabl, and slipped inside.

He fell back against the door for a minute, shaking and fighting back tears, but it passed quickly, and he walked into the kitchen, stripping to the waist and washing himself off using a rag in the sink. After removing his boots and pants, he placed the bloodstained clothes around the sink and removed his last blade from one of the pants' pockets. It wasn't even a knife, just scalpel, plain steel. A last resort, useful for taking out an eye or stabbing an uncovered throat.

Thick, black blood splattered the sink as Vincent cut out the burned part of his cheek, calm and without a sound. He dropped the charred skin on the dirty shirt and ran a finger around the hole, wishing he could see his reflection and just how bad it was. But it would heal, sooner or later. He wadded the clothes into a tight bundle and dropped all of them in the trash, scooping up his boots and walking into the living room. The vampire floated up the narrow ladder, pushing the hatch open, into the attic, where Marceline kept a small bed.

In one corner of the room was a small trunk, which Vincent floated over to, and procuring a small, gold key from one of his boots, opened. Neatly folded inside was a pair of black silk trousers, a plain black shirt, another dressy coat, and a crimson scarf. Atop this ensemble sat a black, also silk, cavalier hat, its material alone suggesting elegant hand-crafting, a ruby feather embedded in one side. The elder vampire carefully laid them out on a small dresser before easing himself onto Marceline's bed.

His eyes started to tear up again, but he willed them away. No more crying, not until this bloody business was seen through. Tomorrow evening he would go back to the others and see if there were any more vampires left in Ooo. With luck, a proper offensive could be mounted, and if not, off he would go again on his one-man crusade to bring about a true end to a species hell-bent on destroying him.

It didn't take long for sleep to overcome him, whether he wanted it to or not. In his dreams, blackness was all to be seen; it would remain the same throughout his slumber.


	4. Chapter 4

_Saints protect her now..._

Vincent crashed back into awareness, his eyes snapping open and his body lurching into an upright position at the foot of the bed. It felt as if his skin was bristling like the fur of a startled cat, so acute was his awareness of something in the house.

His face was wet. He raised a shaking hand to one cheek, rubbing it, then licked his fingers. Tears, not blood. He looked around the room, slightly relieved that he hadn't been ganked in his sleep.

Something was wrong. Something besides him was inside Marceline's house. Something had somehow found the cave, gotten inside, and broken into the house. The fog of sleep was rapidly leaving his mind, his thoughts beginning to buzz like a grist of busy bees. The vampire quickly slipped to the dresser and pulled the silky pants on, leaving the rest of his clothes on the dresser. No sense in getting blood on all of them.

Cautiously, he opened the hatch and stuck his head down into the main room downstairs, looking around. Nothing in sight, but the door was open. Vincent flipped down, landing softly on the carpet, half-crawling to the kitchen. Somebody was in there, sounded like they were digging through the garbage. He peered in, flinched, and stumbled back, falling on his ass.

Marceline was in there. Someone had half-assedly sewn her head back on, reanimated her corpse, and was using it for God knows what. Well, besides hunting him. His eyes almost immediately started to well up once more with tears, but Vincent wasn't about to let despair overcome him. Blinking several times to clear his vision, he hauled himself up, nails digging into the wall, and staggered into the kitchen.

_Come angels of the lord..._

His first attempt at getting her attention failed, a weak, wet sound that stuck in his throat. The elder vampire cleared his throat and tried again, this time managing a low growl. It took a concentrated effort on his part not to run and throw his arms around her. When she turned, that urge died faster than she had. The dead eyes looking back at him did not belong to the Vampire Queen. His friend was dead, this thing a poor imitation of her unlife.

She lunged at him, wood splintering as her hand made contact with the door frame behind where his head had been seconds before. The half-dressed Vincent shifted easy, dodging or shrugging off her blows, leading her out of the house. He made no attempt to strike her, to even push her back or knock her off balance. Marceline had died two days ago, and that was that. She didn't deserve to be hurt anymore, to be killed again. She wasn't just some shuffling zombie, some sick fuck had resurrected her for most assuredly a diabolic purpose.

And whoever had done that had to be nearby., because Vincent could smell them. Human. Hopefully the only human necromancer left. A damned good thing, that. Once the humans died, the vampires had taken care to hide anything related to necromancy, and few had found the resources to teach themselves the art. Damnable art, if it could even be called such. The elder vampire had always felt disturbing the dead in such a way was one of the most disrespectful things anyone could ever do.

_Come angels of unknown..._

The sun was already setting, the hole in the cave behind the house leaking an ever decreasing amount of sunlight. He'd slept an entire day away. A moment spent lost in thought presented an opportunity for the thing that wasn't Marceline to rake sharp nails across his chest, as his reflexes narrowly kept his face -and the hole burned in his cheek from the silver arrow the night before- out of her reach. Instinctively, he started to swing back, catching himself and forcing his fist to miss just in time.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something twinkle. The last gasps of the dying daylight had caught a piece of jewelry or a blade, giving away the location of someone, the necromancer responsible for this, Vincent hoped. He ducked another clawlike hand and turned, moving far faster than Marceline was now capable of, slamming full force into whatever was lurking near the cave's entrance. Something crunched as the two hit the ground, and the thing he'd collided with screamed into his face in pain, surprise, and anger.

Lady Luck was on his side for the first time in weeks.

An amateur necromancer lay pinned beneath him, a blue stone in one hand. With little knowledge of what manner of sorcery was involved in reviving his friend, the vampire snatched the stone and crushed it in one hand, shards raining down on the cloaked human's face. He looked back, just in time to see the murdered vampire's body fall to the ground.

An awful, sick, feeling washed over Vincent. He looked down at the anguished, writhing man beneath him, blood-red eyes staring blindly into a pair of pale blues, mouth twitching uncontrollably. "Why?" The word barely made it past his throat.

"They... they made me do it..." The tone suggested groveling would soon follow. Begging for this pathetic waste of a life to be spared. "I didn't... oh god, I didn't want to..."

Vincent leaned down, teeth close enough to scrape the man's neck. "I will ask you again... why?" He broke the skin, just slightly, wanting to clamp down, to rip out the man's throat and drain him dry. "Did you learn nothing from the Great War? The second World War? The Mushroom Wars?" He leaned back, if only to focus his horrifyingly unnatural eyes on the man's face. "ANSWER ME!" Something was whimpered about sparing his life. "_**NOT**_** WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR**!"

The vampire found his thumbs pressing down hard on the wizard's cheekbones. He could feel them starting to cave beneath his hands and stopped, silently observing the fear in the young man beneath him. Then, with a snarl, he brought one fist up, then down into the man's face, then the other, again, again, again. Vincent only stopped when he noticed bone-white gleaming on a few of his knuckles, and the man was dead by then; the vampire had snapped his neck at some point.

Vincent ripped open the necromancer's robe and tore the top half off, grabbing one of the man's legs and dragging him to the mouth of the cave facing the ocean. Grabbing a couple rocks, the vampire tied them in a bundle, then tied the bundle around the wizard's neck. He noticed the man's chest rising and falling again, but it mattered not. _Neck must not be all the way broken after all..._ Again grabbing one of the wizard's legs, he walked as far as he could, grabbed the other leg, and spun several times before flinging the soon-to-be-corpse out into the sea.

The elder then stumbled back to Marceline's corpse, collapsing beside her. Whatever that stone was for, it wasn't this. He'd simply shattered the wizard's concentration, leaving him with a body that was sewn back together wrong. Vincent moved a little closer, so that his face was even with hers, a foot and a half away. "We've lost a lot of people, Mar... I don't... we'll win, even if I have to lock the others up somewhere and kill whatever humans remain myself. We'll win. But I don't know if I want to..." He paused, trying to gather his thoughts. For a moment, he wondered why she didn't ask him what was wrong. Then he opened his eyes again.

"I could deal with everyone around me dying, while I didn't. I could deal with having to do things I'm not proud of to keep myself from meeting an untimely demise. I don't... I..." Vincent slowly stood up, brushing himself off. "I'm quite clearly losing my fucking mind, talking to the headless body of my dearest friend." Unsteady, he staggered back into the house, looking for anything he could use to dig a hole. A cabinet drawer seemed his best bet, and after ripping one free of its hinges, he headed back to start digging.

Tonight would be a long night, to be sure.


	5. Chapter 5

It had taken him close to four hours to dig a grave for Marceline. Every so often he found himself paralyzed and curling up in the ever-increased hole. He'd cleaned up and made his way to where the others were, the looted and partially destroyed remains of Finn and Jake's tree-house.

Vincent had slept for several days after getting there.

He now watched from atop of the tree-house, eyeing the final band of human resistance approaching. Perhaps band was too loose a fit, as nothing short of an army was marching towards the last of the vampire's fortifications. It seemed that the few straggling groups left had formed some sort of coalition, and undoubtedly felt stomping their way here as the stormy sky slowly grew lighter would be some sort of ballsy move, capable of striking fear into the hearts of the undead.

Such was not the case. No. The oldest of the vampires licked his lips, his teeth, as he turned, pulling his hat snugly down on his head. "As you can see, it seems the humans have been left to their own devices. The rest of Ooo has realized how utterly imbecilic it is to persecute a race that has done _nothing_ to bring harm to any living thing and abandoned them." He looked up at a sky starting to darken again, then looked the others over. "Shouldn't be too difficult. Worse comes to worse they've gotten their hands on more silver, but..." He pulled the brim of his hat lower, shielding his eyes from a thin sunbeam, smile spreading wide and the blackened scar on his cheek opening to reveal gleaming white teeth. "Just cut their hands off before they can get you. Trust me, it's easier than it sounds.

"I know what I'm about say is pretty close to home. Too close to a bad taste some of you have already in your mouths." The elder licked his lips again. "It does for me, at least. We've been persecuted for nigh on ten centuries now, openly and secretly. If you'll recall, we had a hand in reshaping this desecrated earth after the humans blew it all to hell, helping to make it vibrant and colorful again. Granted, some of the effects of magic mingling with radiation certainly weren't pretty -need I remind you of what dwells in the dark here- but all in all I'd say we did well." Vincent angrily stamped one foot on the planks of the balcony they'd erected across from the sailboat-lookout tower. "I'll be damned if I'm going to let anyone take that away from me. As gruesome as it may be, a world without humans -Finn excluded, God rest his soul- would have been a world easily accepting of our kind. To think of such, an entire race, wiped out, is cruel. Inhuman even. But none amongst our ranks are human now, are we? And let us not forget what went on just before the bombs started to fall."

Vincent turned again, brushing hair out of his eyes, and took a step towards the railing behind him. The sun was receding again, conceding defeat to the colossal storm brewing. He lurched over the railing, swooping down nearly to the ground before leveling out and zipping off towards the humans. It briefly occurred to him, even with their numbers reduced to less than twenty, a gaggle of flying vampires armed with bladed weapons would make quick work of the approaching armada.

He cast the thought aside quickly. It might have been easier, possibly a better strategy, but it certainly wasn't as fun. And really, this wouldn't be as much a battle as it would them playing with their food.

Vincent could hear whoops coming from behind him as the others followed suit, boring down on a human sea some hundred times their number. He smiled, slowing into an off-balance run, stumbling forward, then began to right himself, tearing the oversized, inhumanly heavy sword from its sheath on his back. It had belong to a human several centuries ago, a giant among men, a dear friend of Vincent's and a dearer ally to his kind.

That beast of a man had fallen in combat, dragged from the front lines with a spear through his belly, bleeding to death. As his life slipped away, he bequeathed the gigantic sword to Vincent. And the vampire had kept it close since, wielding it even as the humans took to using guns.

Right now, that blade ripped out of a man's back, a screech so powerful tearing through Vincent's throat that all movement in the rolling hills stopped for a moment. A whirlwind of silver-steel followed, the lone vampire carving a swathe through the humans, his companions destroying anything left in his wake. Again he roared, savagely beheading a boy no older than twelve, more blood splashing onto his fine clothes, dripping down the legs of his silk pants.

The blood-red scarf wrapped too loosely around his neck fluttered off somewhere behind him as he moved, sinking into grass wet with blood.

His own blood was staining the ground too, black and thicker than tar. A mistimed parry allowed for a crude blade to slice open his shirt, and the vampire ripped it free, tossing it to the sky above, an offering to a God that had turned his back on them. The silver of the sword stung, but not enough to stop him. He cleaved the man open from the waist up, shoved the split hull aside, and pressed on.

He noticed their ranks were starting to thin, thankfully. His vision was starting to fade a little, a result of silver poisoning undoubtedly, and his limbs were growing increasingly heavy. He still continued hacking his way through the human swarm, but it was getting tougher.

The first booming thunderclap took them all by surprise, but the elder didn't slow down. He couldn't, not now. Rain started to fall, a little at first, then a nice shower. The vampires kept their attack going strong, and the humans were starting to scatter a little. Vincent and several others took to the air, working in pairs to herd the bloodbags back together, swooping down, impaling a few, then snatching them up into the air and zipping high into the sky before releasing their captives.

Such an uneven battle. No casualties on the undead side, complete and utter annihilation of the humans. Most likely the last of their kind, a dying breed. No more wasting away of the Earth's resources, polluting, haphazard destruction of its beauty. Whatever ended up becoming the dominant race would probably do the same thing, in a few hundred years. The cycle would begin again, and his kind most likely wouldn't be around to help reshape the world this time.

Vincent fell out of the sky, slamming hard into the side of a hill and rolling down it, eyes open but almost unseeing, exhausted body all but useless. The immense sword slid out of his grasp rolling through the wet grass, away from him. He'd lost his hat sometime while flying about, and it lay trampled some distance away.

Cora appeared in the last blurry dot of his vision that hadn't been taken by the blackness. She tried her best to smile at him, but it was a feeble attempt at best, he saw right through it. But he smiled at her, the slit in his face widening, a trickle of blood leaking out of it- one of his back teeth had been knocked out in the melee. "Hey kid... we did good. I know it's not something many of us wanted to do-" He stopped abruptly, blinking. The elder was having trouble thinking. "But we've seen this blood business through, and the rest of you can live in peace for a while, maybe."

"Maybe." Cora's echo was half-hearted, and he doubted she believed him. She looked around, watching the rest of their kind, now numbering almost the same as the humans, finishing the slaughter. She'd seen it before, all of them had. Without another word she pulled him up, against her, and he weakly wrapped his arms around her.

"You did well, little one... and I'm happy to have taught you... proper manners."

He didn't let go, even once the light left his eyes and the red dots in them disappeared. Cora set him down, the only death on their side. A berserker, charging in valiantly, absorbing the most damage. He'd kept any more of them from getting killed. And in the process had been killed himself, not by one blow that carried more force than the others, but the combination of a hundred smaller impacts, each packing a poisonous sting.

She'd see to it that he received a hero's pyre tonight, when they took stock of the last few days. Tomorrow she and a few others would start the attempts to reconcile with the rest of Ooo.

In a few days plans for a memorial to the Queen and her ludicrously loyal knight would begin. A grand monument would be constructed for the two, alongside those of Finn the Human and the others who had fallen in the fiercest fighting the world had seen in over a century.

They would not be forgotten.


End file.
